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Question

Can A "Blend" of Hardware Work?

May 30, 2019 1:24PM PDT

I live in a one-story, ranch-style home, built in 1976. There's approximately 2,600 sq. ft. under-air. My home office is at the southeast corner. The broadband (BlueStream) comes in there through the vendor's gateway. I don't use the gateway's Wi-Fi. I take the signal from the gateway and bring it to my Asus RT-ACRH17 router (NEW) through an standard Ethernet cable. I use the Asus router for the main Wi-Fi signal in our home. However, the router is not at the highest point in the room and the room has 2 mirrored closet doors (covered by sheets).
Using a Netgear hub, I'm able to accommodate all of the hard-wire and Wi-Fi needs through approximately one-half of our home.

Our master bedroom is on the southwest corner of the home. The Wi-Fi signal from the Asus Router, barely makes it beyond our kitchen. However, in our bedroom is a Smart TV, DirecTV master unit/DVR and Blu-Ray DVD player, that all require (the TV can use a Wi-Fi signal) an Ethernet connection.

Over the last few years, I was using an AsusRT-N66R router in the home office and various extenders in an effort to bring a strong signal to the bedroom. The latest extender was the Netgear Nighthawk EX7000, which my research showed, was one of the best available. IT did OK until the recent firmware fiasco the Netgear caused when they, apparently, knowingly, released a buggy firmware update. Thousands of user of the EX7000 found our extender failing miserably. Months have gone by, with more effort by users, than Netgear, to find ways around the problem. As of Monday, May 27th, no corrective firmware has been released by the company. With this problem, I really had no way to get a decent signal to the bedroom. That is when I purchased the new Asus AC Router. (Yes, I'm aware AX is coming, but I'll have to take out two additional mortgages to pay for an AX router!

Since, I subscribed to CBS All Access when the EX7000 was working, I went a few months unable to watch it, as well as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, etc. So, I had to come up with a method of getting a decent signal to the bedroom.

I found that if I moved the Netgear Extender to the living room, on top of a wall unit, it picked up the main Wi-Fi signal being send by the new Asus AC router and re-transmitted it on both channels with a different SSID. I then took my OLD Asus N router, and configured it to be an access point and placed that in the bedroom. I then ran a Cat 6 cable from the Netgear EX7000 to the Asus Access Point. Both the DirecTV box and the TV are hardwired into the access point. Sounds good, right?

The only problem is while watch CBS All Access (but not Nextflix or Amazon Prime Video) there is a frequent delay in the video signal. The delay is approximately 10-20 seconds, then the feed returns...for a short time before it freezes again. So, to watch a 46-minute episode of the new Star Trek series, takes over an hour with these delays.

While I fully understand new mesh systems and "wonderful" they are supposed to be, not all of us can afford to drop $300-$600 for a mesh system plus, I would still need a unit in the bedroom to connect the three units (TV, DirecTV, BlueRay DVD Player) via Ethernet cables.

I would greatly appreciate any advice or other ideas to help with this problem.

Thank you!
SG

Discussion is locked

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Answer
I'm not much help.
May 30, 2019 1:45PM PDT

Why? Extenders. I find them to be hit and miss plus you can't support them as your story is just one of many where the makers goof and it's game over. Our shop can't sell such since clients faulted us for the problems.

What we do see work is getting wired where we can and then for remote spots the usual Access Point or a router (wired) then set as an AP.

Even if your network was perfect you didn't write the delays happened on Netflix and other streaming services. https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/10/16862278/cbs-all-access-star-trek-discovery-streaming-service-analysis noted it was broken for them and there are forums full of chatter about their buggy service.

On top of that I find issue after issue with most Smart TV and BD players. What seems to work better disregarding the networking for the moment is the Roku and Amazon Fire stick or box players. The smart TV and BD player makers are often way behind on getting their software/firmware patched and the performance is sub-par to Roku or Amazon sticks and boxes.

Wish I had better news but expanders are things we won't go near and for smart TVs and BD players we walk in with a Roku/Amazon stick or box to see if that works. For the network we stick to solid solutions like getting things wired and APs where it's called for.

Finally there is one last thing. Be sure the date and time is correct on all network and Smart devices plus test with a Google DNS like 8.8.8.8.

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Another vote for Roku
May 31, 2019 3:36PM PDT

For streaming, I was using Tivo for years. I had my mom set up on her Blu-Ray player. Roku was a breath of fresh air. Far, far faster and more reliable.

My house is close to the same size as yours. Wi-Fi *does* reach from one corner of the house to the other, albeit fairly weak. Like R.Proffitt, I have run cables at my place. For me, the reliability was worth the effort.

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Answer
Extenders have never worked for me...
May 31, 2019 4:32PM PDT

I come from the background of years and years trying to make a single router work well for my house. The problem is that the living room is at the front end of my house, and the room with my router is at the other end. Our 2 main TV's are in the living room, and upstairs in the bedroom. Wireless in the living room has always been a problem...it's there, but the speed wasn't great because of the distance and intervening walls and furniture. I should add that putting ethernet wiring in the walls in our house is pretty much out of the question, no full attic, and house on a slab. Don't want to run the cabling on the outside of the house, or rip out the walls inside to feed cables. If we ever re-drywall the interior of the house, or re-side the outside, we'll have that opportunity, but not doing that unless there's another reason *smile*.

Tried powerline networking and extenders first...neither worked well or reliably. This house is just not wired so that powerline networking works very well, and couldn't find an extender that lived up to its specifications. "Fast lane" or "express" indeed. Performance of the extenders that I tried, and I tried several of the top of the line extenders, was marginal and not reliable. Gave up on those, too.

The mesh wireless systems that are out there now have provided me with a great solution. The best part is that the backhaul for these mesh systems is also wireless, so there's no need to add ethernet cable in the walls for connecting the nodes. They are expensive, so I just closed my eyes and imagined my house with great wireless without doing anything except adding a mesh wireless system *smile*. And spent the money. We have the eero mesh product, with three nodes. One "gateway" node at the fiber gateway, and a node at the living room and bedroom TV's. These are the ones with 3 radios, so the extra 5GHz. radio gives extra bandwidth for backhaul. The eero has provided whole house wireless coverage, great wireless throughout the house. The wireless backhaul really works, that second 5GHz. radio turns the trick.

After we had the eero for a few months, I decide to try MoCA 2.0 to connect the remote nodes to the the "gateway" node. Just for fun. While I can't currently put ethernet cables in the walls, we do have coax cable in the walls from when we had cable TV that is now unused since we "cut the cable". Thought that I might as well have a try at using the coax in the walls to get "wired-equivalent" connections between the eero nodes for faster backhaul. To get MoCA 2.0 to work I just had to replace a splitter in our partial attic, and the amplified splitter at the cable POE with MoCA 2 compatible ones, and the Motorola MM1000 MoCA 2.0 adapters immediately started working. While the eeros worked well without the MoCA, now they work even better. We now get our ISP's full speed on the wireless at both remote eero nodes. Not really needed, but great to have.

Anyways, after being in this house for over 25 years now, we finally have really good wireless. Add that to the 100/100 fiber internet (after a long struggle with Comcast), and our internet TV streaming and OTA antenna with Tablo DVR all works really well. Very happy to have invested in the eero. The MoCA 2.0 is the icing on the cake, but un-iced cake tastes really good, too *smile*.

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Great Info
Jun 4, 2019 12:37PM PDT

Thanks for sharing your experience. As you probably saw from my initial post, I'm having a similar problem. And, another post somewhat allayed my concerns, when I found out the CBS All Access is a self-streaming service that has exhibited a long history of poor streaming capability.
Here's my one question regarding the Mesh units. In my master bedroom, I have two devices that require a hard-wire (Ethernet) connection as neither has a WiFi radio. Is there a port on one of the mesh satellite, with which I can connect a standard hub?
Thanks again!

SSG

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The ports on the Mesh device
Jun 4, 2019 12:51PM PDT

Will have to be answered when we know what Mesh product you have.

At that point CNET members can:
1. Go get the manual or web page of the product.
2. Read what the Ethernet port does.

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Appreciation
Jun 6, 2019 2:51PM PDT

My thanks to all for your feedback. One thing though, I can't by a new mesh system without knowing if one of the satellites has at least one Ethernet port into which I can connect the two devices in our master bedroom to the Internet. Neither of these can connect via WiFi, no matter how great the coverage is.
So, if any of you are aware of a mesh system that does have at least one port on one of the satellites, please share that info!
Thanks very much!

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I think we have the chicken and egg problem now.
Jun 6, 2019 3:01PM PDT

So I'm going to limit my search to CNET and then WiFi 6 news.

https://www.cnet.com/news/netgear-orbi-mesh-router-gets-a-next-gen-wifi-6-edition-at-ces-2019/

OK, let's check out the Orbi products.
Specifically the Orbi RBS50 at https://www.netgear.com/orbi/rbs50.aspx
Looks like a hit with just one picture:

See page 3 of https://www.netgear.com/images/datasheet/orbi/RBS50.pdf and these ports are for "Ethernet-enabled devices".

I can't dig into every mesh product out there but if you find another, just ask. Be sure to post a link to it's maker's product page.

PS. Like most mesh products your 1 gigabit ISP may only hit 150 megabits per second on mesh systems. This is not a flaw and since we only need 25 megabits per second for UHD 4K TV I won't call this limiting.

Post was last edited on June 6, 2019 3:03 PM PDT

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Answer
Oh yeah, streaming boxes...
May 31, 2019 4:47PM PDT

Wanted to add another comment on streaming boxes. Started with Fire TV streaming devices, and didn't really like the total Amazon-centric media approach, not to mention all the ads that you can't buy or opt your way out of. Moved to Roku, and found that to be much better, but a very old-style user interface. Not very fast, though, and half the home page is a giant ad. Got OpenDNS ad blocking going for that, and managed to get rid of the ad, but there you are with half your home page being a big empty box. No ad, but you're stuck with the empty space for that missing ad *smile*. Another thing that bothered me at that time was that Roku has no HDhomerun app, since it can't handle the transcoding job required. Ended up with a Tablo, but started with an HDhomerun to use with my OTA antenna.

Heard about the NVIDIA Shield (Android TV) and after looking at some youtube reviews of it decided to give it a shot. Found them on sale, not that much more expensive than the Roku's, and ordered a couple for our 2 main TV's. They turned out to be perfect. Very fast and modern user interface, and no advertising on the home page. Just app access. Streaming is just about perfect, of course. I'm not a gamer, so exiled all that stuff to the cornfield off the top. Really like the Shields. I did get a different remote control for them that has volume and mute buttons on it (Fire Stick 4K remote), and that adds the finishing touch *smile*.

Anyways, I've kept the Roku's for backup, but am now using the Shields for all of our streaming. There's also a Tablo app that provides a nice software interface for the OTA programming and using the Tablo DVR. One thing did come up, there's no BritBox app for the Shield, but I found that I could get BritBox via Prime Video at the same monthly rate, so that's what I'm doing. Very happy with having "cut the cable" at this point.

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Answer
check out mesh
May 31, 2019 5:07PM PDT

most of the mesh wifi networks covers 4-5000 square feet with their basic setup and you can add as needed. might want to check them out. I also have cheap computers hooked up to all of my tvs. this way I can watch just about any video and streaming service available.

I also have roku, smart tvs chromecast and smart dvd players but I never use them or the smart features. computers just more convenient for my usage since I am a cord cutter.